This is for every teacher who refuses to be blamed for the failure of our society to erase poverty and inequality, and refuses to accept assessments, tests and evaluations imposed by those who have contempt for real teaching and learning.

Pages

Friday, June 13, 2014

Happy Birthday BATs!

By:Dr. Mark Naison
and Priscilla Sanstead – Co-founders of BATs

Priscilla Sanstead

I came to activism late. I'd always heard that eventually
you find something in life that combines all the things you love with all the
things you do pretty well. I'd also wanted to find that thing that helps
people. The wake-up call to action for me came with the Seattle Map Test
Revolt. To think that a school's media center would be closed to an entire
school population for weeks just because of testing was mind boggling. I know
how few kids have homes with books and computers with internet access.

In 2011 I had started a Facebook group helping people who
didn't buy into the notion that college (and the associated debt) was the only
way to success. It had over 500 people when I passed it on to someone else
after about 2 years. I started two other education groups to connect people
that now have a couple of hundred members. I had lots of grand ideas for groups
IF a lot of people ever joined! I liked connecting people. I want everyone to
know everyone else so they could feel stronger and empowered. The word "badass"
hadn't yet crossed my path! According to Malcolm Gladwell I was a "People
Connector". And there seemed to be millions in education reform activism
who needed to know each other. How could they all meet in a big way and share
stories and empower each other?

While devouring education activist blogs and joining groups
on Facebook, of course I would meet amazing and passionate activists like Mark
Naison. I asked Mark one day - June 14, 2013 - "when is someone finally
going to do something", because other people were asking the same thing.
He said, "Start a group". Mark and I thought we'd just see what would
happen, but the market already seemed crowded with groups, and nothing really
huge had resonated or captured people's imaginations. We had the usual expectations
- several hundred people in a few months. Mark added Marla Kilfoyle right away,
and we all started adding colleagues and friends, and by Saturday night we
realized we ought to get a website. Marla had proposed a contest with Mark to
find members, and by Sunday night there was no doubt we were riding a rocket
ship. Everything became a blur!

I now got serious with plans for a Really Big Group - to get
an infrastructure in place, facilitate growth, meet the needs of the members,
and "people-connect". We had 20,000 members in 18 days! It was
crazy-busy from the first few days. Fed up teachers told us they loved our
name. Others - teachers, trolls, who knows - joined to tell us they hated it.
Some people were added by well-meaning friends and they were quite indignant
and didn't want to be a badass and told us how we'd never be successful. (Hey,
we were still hearing that last week!)

This new group was active 20 hours a day. It was like the
Wild West! Lots of emotion was overflowing onto us after the most grueling
school year ever for many teachers. Posts went to over a thousand comments.
Original posters of nice threads that turned contentious would get disgusted
and delete their post. We'd be accused of deleting it. And their emotional
fussing and troll-ish remarks would start all over again. Lots of people joined
who really weren't badass, just asshats. And we really hadn't made any
guidelines yet. But we could tell we were helping a lot of people, especially
the New York teachers. They'd join and pour it all out and be heard. Then
they'd feel their new badass power and join in helping us welcome the next
teachers who were joining and sharing and being heard. Someone mentioned that
their television had not been on in 2 weeks! This new group was so compelling
that people couldn't walk away from us - they couldn't leave their computer
screens. Hey, we couldn't either. We had never imagined such a thing as was
this new busy, compassionate, explosive group.

Almost every day some killjoy would post that the group was
'just so negative'. So there was more emotion in response to that. I finally
wrote a long comment on July 2, 2013 to one post that I then named
"Thoughts on Negativity" and put in our Files section. What I was
seeing was most definitely not negativity. We were witnessing hurting people
pouring out their hearts to everyone. We'd suggest to the
negativity-complainers to skip the threads they don't like or else try to be
compassionate. It was so emotional for us on the other side of the screen to be
facilitating this, but there was far and away more painful, raw emotion coming
from our new members. People had found their "place" in BATs, a
refuge, and they proudly became BATs and embraced the name and the power of
this exploding group because it was what they had been waiting for. We weren't
even calling ourselves BATs back then, but teachers now had a fierce new group,
an identity, and were part of something larger than themselves. It looked like
a group that was gong to take action. They had Hope! And we were humbled as
talented people literally poured from the sky with ideas and time and
motivation to help us grow in new ways and in new areas.

Here's the first part of my "Thoughts on Negativity -
written when we were 19 days old:

"I see the negativity here as just SO much pent-up
emotion. I don't have that much of a problem with it. Most of those people
probably haven't had anyone to share (and dump?) all those feelings on that
really, really understands. And with 20,000 people, well, even 1% who are
unhappy write a lot of posts to go through. Skip the posts you don't like just
like you avoid people you don't like.

My motto is always assume best intentions. Since there is no
body language or voice inflection, what some may read a B%&$#-ing, others
read as crying while sharing. People are in all kinds of places in their
journey, (stages of grief, anyone?) and some can't handle the emotions of the
people just coming to grips with the sadness of the loss of their beloved
profession. Compassion is appreciated and valued here."

So Mark and I and Marla and all our new amazing,
compassionate, volunteer badass admins could see from early on that what was
needed in this group was both Action and Compassion - fight the reformers with
one hand (fist) and put the other hand around the battered teachers and parents
and their children who were shell-shocked from the test results out of New York
state. The New York teachers who flocked to our group in huge numbers were our
canaries in the coal mine. This high stake testing machine was what was coming
for the rest of the country. A year of trying to teach with their hands tied
and their students demoralized with incessant tests and assessments had left
students, parents, and the teachers battered. What was suddenly happening to
cause only 30% of the children to pass a test?

So. Where are we now a year later? We have over 48,000 BATs
- teachers, parents, interested college students, and retirees. We have
chapters in 50 states and DC. New York and Florida BATs have close to 2,000
members. BATs has a website, almost 11,000 followers on Twitter, 1,000 followes
on our more recent exploding Pinterest page, our Youtube, the movie channel,
dozens of BATs only secret groups, an outstanding blog, the spin-off groups
BATs International, Canada Badass Teachers Association, New Zealand BATs, and a
group inspired by us - Badass Moms Association. And the most amazing action of
all - a national family-style celebration of the teaching profession and march
around the DoE planned for July 28th.

What a year! Thank you, BATs for joining us on this
improbable journey, for volunteering your time and brilliant ideas, for working
long hours, for having faith that we could hold this rocket ship together to
get where we are today. Thank you for sharing your painful, sweet, angry,
empowering, shocking and/or hopeful stories with us. We all feel connected. We
are all better for it. And we couldn't have done it without YOU! I love you,
BATs! And I think we all love each other!

Love Letter to the BATS- On the First Anniversary of the
Badass Teachers Association

Dr. Mark Naison

I have been enraged
by what has been happening to teachers and public educationfor at least 7 years. My involvement began
in2007 with school grading and school
closings in the Bronx, which drove the history projects I was doing out of the
public schools, and victimized many of the great teachers I had worked with. It
built up steam when Barack Obama and Arne Duncan unleashed Race to the Top
which blamed teachers for the country’s education deficits and required that
teachers be rated on the basis of student test scores

I started writing
and speaking about what was happeningand got a modest responsefrom
teachers and education activists around the country. I spoke at several rallies
in Washington, helped found the Dump Duncan group on Facebook, participated in
several unsuccessful demonstrations againstschool closings in NY and found my frustration building. I became a
loose cannon, exploding in rage at dinner parties and family gatherings when
anyone attacked teachers, losingmany
friends in the process.Everyone I
thought I was a crazy man when I attacked whatMichael Bloomberg was doing in NYC and Barack Obama was doing throughout
the US was a deadly blow to Democracy and Free Speech as well as Public
Education

Then came the great
NY Test Revolt of the Spring of 2013. Parents up in arms about Common Core
aligned tests, mostly in suburbs and rural area, began opting out their
children in unprecedented numbers. I was invited to speak in several Long
Island communities and in the process met some amazing parents and teachers who
were as alarmed about what was happening in education policy as I was. One of
these was a parent activist from Oklahoma named Priscilla Sanstead; another was
a teacher and parent from Long Island named Marla Kilfoyle.Even though I only knew them from email and
Facebook, I found them to be kindred spirits, funny, creative, feisty, ready to
fight back against the Billionaire Privatizersand their supporters in both parties using social media as well as more
traditional protest methods

Then one day, when
Priscilla and I were comparing notes, we decided, as an experiment to create a
Facebook group called“The Badass Teachers Association.” We hadbeen working togetheron an innovative site called“ The Badass Parents Association” which had
amassed a nice following in a few months and thought we might be able to
attract a few hundred teacherswho were
as angry as we were about the testing and scriptingand demonization of teachers in America’s
public schools

What happened next
took us totally by surprise and changed the course of American education
history. Priscilla launched the pageon
June 14, 2013 at4:30 PM and we invited several people around the country we had
worked with to join, one of whom was Marla. By Sunday night June 16, in part
attracted by a recruiting contest Marla had started, we had nearly 2,000 people
in the group.No one had ever seen
anything like it. Teachers all over the US were pouring into a group with a name
that you could not easily mention in polite company, that seemed- at least to
some-impertinent and unprofessional, and that connoted total frustration with
normal paths of protest for an aggrieved group.

I was utterly
stunned by this phenomenon. I had never been part of any organization that had
grown this fast, much less an organization that had been started with such low
expectations. But when I thought about what was going on, I was deeply moved by
what was happening. Clearly, I was not alone in my rage! All over the country,
teachers were totally fed up with being the scapegoat for failed social
policies and the punching bag for political leaders, media pundits and everyone
trying to shape education policy. They were, like me, ready to be up front, in
your face and outrageous, demanding that teachers have a place at the table or they
would turn over the table!

What I felt that
weekend is was relief, gratitude, and determination. I was no longer alone. I
was part of an army of teachers ready to fight back even if their colleagues,
friends, relatives and union leaders thought they were crazy. I decided, along
with Priscilla and Marla, to put everything I had into this movement to build
it, nurture it and help it grow, not only because the country needed it, but
because we all needed it!

Every day since—and
it is a year now-- has been filled with purpose, determination, but above all
with LOVE. I have met so many great teachers and activists around the country
through BATS whose courage and creativity and fighting spirit inspires me every
day.Andwhile my colleagues, relatives and what remain of my old friends still
think I am crazy, they look at me with a new respect because I am part of a
powerful national movement of teachers who will not let their voice be
smothered and ignored.

BATS and the people in it have given me purpose, given me
solidarity , and given me hope.